


Even Though I Knew The End

by ceeainthereforthat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, Canon-Typical Violence, Chicago (City), Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mid-Century Psychiatric Practices, Mild Gore, POV First Person, Period-Typical Ableism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Smoking, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6967522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceeainthereforthat/pseuds/ceeainthereforthat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Expelled High Magician Dean Winchester tracks a serial killer on the streets of Chicago in January 1941, and the Men of Letters don’t like that one bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> Art is by the brilliant and talented kai-art! [if you're not following her on tumblr you can fix that now. ](http://kai-art.tumblr.com/)
> 
> This story was read and developmentally edited by messier51 and defiler-wyrm, with some advice gratefully taken from matociquala8. Beta read by metatron the transformer and chiwalker.

Act I: 1.

 

Moonlight sparkled off the shards of smashed lightbulbs. It glittered on the wet asphalt underfoot and cast my shadow over a small ritual circle drawn on a smear of old blood. Bone-deep Chicago cold seeped into my ungloved hands as I stared at the unnaturally still plumb of a pendulum. Kelly McIntyre's spirit ought to be batting the silver weight around like a kitten, falling over herself to tell what happened to her. It was like she’d never been in this alley, but she had been. She'd bled.

I couldn’t freeze out here all night. Fifty dollars is more than double my consultation on an occult case. But the last date of my too-short life started in two hours, and a portrait of Grant wasn't worth missing it.

The pendulum went in my breast pocket. My camera hung around my neck, the bellowed lens stopped at its widest, the shutter tension open and slow. I was ready. As soon as it got dark enough to take pictures.

The stink of frozen garbage permeated this darkened alley behind a grocer's and a butcher shop west of the Loop. All the lights had been smashed out by chunks of brick and my good aim. My toes were numb chunks of flesh pinched by too-tight overshoes, and my ears were huge with cold by the time clouds blocked Luna's view.

Finally. I drew a tiny white handled knife and cut the little finger of my left palm.

“ _Sanguine, coniunge meum et responsē.”_

Three drops of blood fell to the cracked asphalt between my feet, landing on the sigil drawn with the scrapings of alarm clock paint and the spores of a Japanese mushroom picked on a moonless night. Luna hid her face, and magic happened.

It's the principle of contagion and sympathy, see. My blood activates the luminescent properties of radium and the living glow of the fungus and connects it to the blood spilled here--

You know what, let's skip that bit. The ground beneath my feet glowed, spreading along the alley in an obscene greenish smear like the hands on a glow in the dark clock, or a--yeah, a fairy mushroom.

Signs and sigils covered the north and south walls, sprawling onto the asphalt to the east and west. I comprehended some, but the rest--they weren't Greek to me. I could read that. A cipher? Something like astrological glyphs, but I could read those, too.

Enough standing around with my jaw unhinged. I snapped a photo, slid the shield over the exposure, and flipped the cartridge. I had a system: first North, East, South, West. And then the details.

My client hadn't been whistling in the wind. This was trouble, worse trouble than a haunting, worse trouble than a hex. Half of Kelly McIntyre's blood had painted the ground and the walls in the complex geometry of a ritual circle, unlike anything I'd ever learned. 

This was one hell of a last job.

Another cartridge slid into my camera, and I got a closer look at the marks on the north wall, crouching to get the best frame.

Wait. Crouching. I backed up and counted bricks, held my arm up to reckon eyeline.

"Huh."

The Half-Moon killer could have been called the Half-Pint killer. The markings put him at about five foot three.

How did a pipsqueak that size haul an amazon like Nightingale MacIntyre to this piece of the alley? I wondered at the state of the songbird's nails. Had she fought back, or was she dead weight? Could I grease somebody at the morgue to find out?

Focus, Winchester. Get the pictures. I crouched again, shooting a square of the unknown alphabet on the south wall. The shutter clicked open, and the glow intensified an instant before it all went dark...or I should say, bright.

Luna was back, shining with all her curiosity.

"Dammit."

I had another twist of luminous solution. Enough for another spell, but I would have to wait to use it. I looked up at the sky and reckoned. Another half hour.

No. Too long. Six would have to be enough. Time to pack up.

"What's your business here?"

My fault. I had cast no wards, hadn't even set up a trip line. Sloppy. I deserved to get pinched.

Two men in overcoats and wide-brimmed fedoras came around the corner--one tall and barrel-bodied, the other shorter, standing like a boxer. The big one pointed a pistol straight at me.

Shit. Cops, or robbers? My Graflex weighed heavily around my neck. I grabbed air and gave a grin.

"The scene's clean but a second look never--aw hell." I put my hands down. "Evening, gentlemen. Nice night."

"Dean Winchester," the little one sneered.

Not cops. Not robbers. High magicians, and that was worse. I lifted the collar of my coat and flicked my hat-brim at them. "At your service. What brings the Men of Letters out to such a charming location?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" The little one did the talking, and didn't that just figure. "Poking around where you don't belong, aren't you?"

Sure was. But for a fifty-dollar consultation, I'd bother a witches' coven. "Relax, fellas. I want to help, same as you."

"Who tipped you on the case?" the big one asked.

"A hunch. I couldn't sit by if there was something...obscure happening. All the murders on the sun squaring the moon, within a degree of orb..."

"Oh yeah," the little one said. "You're an _astrologer_."

"Auspex," I corrected. "That's Latin for--"

"Enough." The big one fit the calm and collected role to Shorty's pugnacious charm. "We appreciate your interest. We're handling this."

"I'm just a concerned citizen--"

"I comprehend the generosity of your offer, Mr. Winchester, but I am pressured to decline," the big one said.

Leaving was a good idea. Somebody could get hurt. The little guy was aching to get busy, and I'd oblige him if the press camera on my chest wasn't worth its weight in gold. I didn't need the Men of Letters breathing down my neck. Time to break an ankle.

I backed up a step. "If you need my help--"

He leveled the gun at me. "Scram."

"Right," I said. "Pleasant evening, gentlemen."

2.

I stood in the dark and moved the film through developer with miles of room between each plate. If I scratched a negative with only six in the tray Clyde would climb out of his grave to bust my chops. All six hung on the line in the time I would have used to scrape my face and change my shirt.

I shut the darkroom door behind me, but the markings on the film negatives followed me out of the room. The Half-Moon killer used High magic, of a kind I didn't know--not that I ever claimed to know it all.

But the Men of Letters guarding the scene? I did not want to tangle with them. Never mind the Golden Dawn. Forget the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Society of Light. Dismiss the naked gasping of witches or the root and bone magic of the folk. They all have a corner of the secrets the Men of Letters hoard in their chapterhouses, and a fifty-dollar consultation fee wasn't worth their ire.

I was lucky all they had ever done was expel me.

My Chesterfields hid under a pile of mail on my desk. Envelopes slid off the side and landed on the linoleum, disturbing dust gathered around the legs. I left the mail where it lay and lit up.

Blood ritual meant somebody more willing to murder than was considered charming. My client could afford to be generous, but it wasn't like I could take it with me. Add that to what the Men of Letters did to people who poked in their business?

The smart answer was no. Sorry, doll. Not this time. I better break it to her right away. I picked up the phone, wedging the receiver between my ear and shoulder.

The phone rang twice before she answered. "Hello, darling."

"Hello, Crowley. Were you expecting me?"

Her voice was a throaty warble, the kind that lingered in your ears. "Dean. Calling so soon?"

"So late," I said. "I managed six photos before I was interrupted."

"Six? In the dark?"

"Trade secret, I'm afraid."

"I could be generous if you shared that spell with me."

"And lose my trademark? Doll, my weight in rubies--"

"I could make it happen."

She probably could make it happen. But rubies couldn't buy what I needed. Nothing could.

"It's a case all right, but it's too hot. I can't help you."

"Give me a chance to change your mind. Bring the photos in the morning--"

"I won't have them until dinnertime," I said. "They need to dry."

"Bring yourself then. I adore breakfast meetings. Or we could start tonight, over a drink."

"Sorry, doll. I have a date." Who might not be there if I didn't step on it.

"Lucky creature," Crowley said. "Breakfast. Ten sharp."

3.

I hurried to the Wink on the east end of the Loop. Well. First I walked into a saloon, then kept going past the tables and headed toward the back as if I aimed for the poker room. I cut left into an alcove, opened a mop closet, and knocked to the right rhythm. I put my membership card next to my mug and Sylvester stared through the peephole before opening the wall.

"Evening, handsome. You're late."

I gave him some skin. "I should have brought flowers. How's Moira?"

He smiled with pride. "Moira's got her suit on tonight. Playing horn up at the radio."

"Good gig. Tell her hi gorgeous, will you?"

"Sure." He glanced at the bulge under my left arm. "Check your iron?"

"Will do." I passed him under the light of a pendant lamp to creak my way down the stairs.

"Dean." The coat-check boy smiled to see my face and a two-bit tip to hold my coat and hat.

Two singles stored up my persuader in a locker. I didn't bother taking off the holster since I feel strange without it. 

"You need cigarettes, Dean?" Mitzi (though that wasn't really her name) flicked ringed fingers over the tray in front over her.

I paid for a pack of Chesterfields with a quarter and a kiss to her rouged cheek, the texture just a little prickly under her makeup.

"You look gorgeous, doll."

She fluttered her hands and shooed me away. "Go break some other girl's heart, you wicked man."

I grinned and swept open the beaded curtain to the Wink.

Somebody found this place at the end of the Great War and the beginning of the Great Experiment, put a bar in it, and it had been running ever since. The Wink was long and narrow, its chipped brick walls covered in hand-carved cherry wood. Real crystal chandeliers glittered through a fog of cigarette smoke, lined four in a row down the long room, hardly wider than a corridor. The way was empty, Miss Francine up on the lighted stage at the far end singing _I've Got You Under My Skin_ , swaying in a glittering blue gown.

Everywhere you looked down this tunnel of a bar were men. Men in double breasted suits with their hair combed back as they leaned on each other. Men in waistcoats and shirt sleeves, cuddled around a companion in satin and sequins and blue fox stoles. Men who drank and laughed and eyed each other the way they'd never dare on the street.

I took my place at the end of the bar. A highball sat fizzing next to my empty chair and beside it sat Jimmy Novak, listening to the songbird up on the round stage. He'd waited. I looked at my watch. Forty-five minutes, and he'd waited.

He had his jacket on, the shoulders sharp angled and fashionable. His scarf hung neatly on the back of his chair. One last sip of bourbon rested in his glass, that's how close I cut it. His neck was bare, the hair squared off in a recent trim, the top combed so neatly I longed to mess it up. He put out his hand on the polished bar top and I laid mine over his, twining our fingers together.

"You're late," he said.

"I'm sorry, Baby." Forty-five minutes I could have had with him instead of chasing a dud of a job. I had enough put away. It would keep Jimmy for a little while.

I wish I had more.

He leaned over and let me taste the bourbon on his lips. "And you smell like pictures. You get a job?"

"A consultation."

"Yeah?" His eyes were bright, excited. "Object or People?"

"It's too hot, baby. I'm turning it down." I tossed bourbon and coke over my tonsils and slid off the seat. "Ain't this our song?"

"You say that about all the love songs."

"That's because they're ours. Come on, dance with me."

He let me pull him to the tiny patch of floor in front of the stage. I blew Miss Francine a kiss she caught in her hand without missing a note, and Jimmy folded into my arms.

We'd danced, the first night we'd met in this bar. Jimmy had stumbled over dancing backwards, but he wanted to dance the next night we met up, and every night we met here. He eased into an inside turn and came back to my arms easy as breathing.

"I have something to tell you." He brimmed up with the news and it spilled forth in a grin that showed Jimmy's gums. "There's an opening at KSAN. Station manager."

Jimmy's life was a series of call signs and station identifiers I hardly kept straight, but I knew that one. "San Francisco?"

"Just like we said."

Six years, I wanted to go west. "You're gonna let me take you away?"

He studied me for a moment. "We could get a house."

I fought to make my smile something he would understand. "Our house on a hill."

A house in the city where people like us carved a home for themselves, a city that didn't mind us. Chicago had loved us once, but not lately.

Chicago didn't love our kind at all.

The cautious corners of a smile tugged at his mouth. "Don't you want to go?"

"There's no place I'd rather be."

"It'll be a lot of money."

"I have some money saved." All of it for him, tucked into a strongbox in my office's safe.

He swayed with me and turned around the tiny floor. "You've wanted this for so long. Aren't you happy?"

Our house, steep-roofed and narrow, holding its balance against the slanted street. Our cars tucked up side by side, every night asleep in his bed, every morning coffee and orange juice and my turn to burn the sausage, while I was at it.

"Of course I am." I had wanted it for so long. "It's exactly what I wanted."

Jimmy looked at me again, words on the tip of his tongue.

"What is it?"

"Nothing." He danced closer, his cheek resting against mine. "I'll miss this place."

I'll miss it too.

Maurice stepped up to the front of the stage, the bell of his horn gleaming in the smoky light. He played three long notes before the piano and bass picked up the melody. Miss Francine swayed down the stairs, a gin and tonic in one sapphire-ringed hand, her broad shoulders bare and brown. She winked at me before letting her latest beau guide her to the booth where the performers held court, dazzling in paste gems and pot rouge.

"Dean." Jimmy stepped backwards. "Let's get out of here. Take me home."

"You don't want another dance?" I asked.

"Put on a record when we get home," he said. "I want to talk."

4.

We walked shoulder to shoulder along the windy streets, the snow sweeping over our faces in tiny hard kisses.

"Okay. No one can hear us," Jimmy said, bumping me with his shoulder. "Why don't you want this case?"

"It's the Half-Moon Killer."

Both his eyebrows went up. "That's occult?"

"I took some pictures, but the last one's probably ruined."

"Let me see it. Maybe there's something to save. When do you meet your client?"

"She wants a breakfast meeting."

Jimmy grinned and dug his elbow into my ribs. "She pretty?"

"Beautiful. Arctic fox and red lipstick, legs up to Heaven."

The wind slapped our faces as we turned onto Washington Street. Jimmy hunched up his shoulders and stuck his nose in his scarf. "Are you curious?"

"Of course I am."

He glanced at me, and spit it out. "If you don't do it, who's going to catch him?"

"Who? Oh. Shit."

Jimmy gave me a lopsided smile. "Nobody does what you do, Dean."

Everybody hoarded their power, guarded their knowledge, defended what was theirs from interlopers. I'd been chased away by Men of Letters. They wouldn't do that if there wasn't something in it for them.

I wasn't sure I wanted to know what.

Jimmy's teeth chattered by the time I unlocked the front door of the Reliance building. He lingered by the radiator as the elevator cars raced down to the main floor, ready to whisk us up to 14. Which wasn't really 14, but no one speaks about the skip from 12.

A wrought iron cage dragged us up to a hallway of dingy Italian marble and grimy mahogany doorways, fragrant with the scent of good India tea. Jimmy produced his key before I did, opening up 1408.

The Reliance building had seen better days. It was a Burnham and Root building, a solid citizen of the White City, but it had emptied during the Depression and never made it back to glory. One neighbor shared this floor, the reason for the floor's perfumed air. He was hardly around, and never on week-ends.

I shut the door behind us and Jimmy kissed me in the dark.

I dropped my hat where I hoped it would land on a chair and kissed him back, our hands helping each other out of coats and scarves and jackets. We left the lights off and passed through my starlit reception room to the space where I kept my books and beyond, to the room where I lay my head. The bedsprings sang and Jimmy did too, because he was always just a little bit like music.

5.

I woke up to cold air and the pale dawn and Jimmy beside the open window with a sparrow on his palm, the little bird bravely plucking a sunflower seed from his fingertips. An entire host loitered on the windowsill, pecking at millet and daring the indoors just to get nearer to him, to eat from his gentle hands. A sparrow perched on his shoulder and loosed an ear-splitting chirrup before flapping outside to brag to his friends.

He stroked the little bird's downy head and smiled. "Good morning."

"Prove it."

Jimmy put the bird away, gently shooing it back outside where birds belonged. The split shells of sunflower seeds lay scattered around his long, bare feet. He stretched and the fronts of his bordeaux robe fell open as he yawned.

I lifted the blankets at my side. "Prove it closer."

"You have a breakfast meeting."

"It's not for hours."

"It's in fifty-five minutes."

"And you, running around bare-assed. Haven't you got a sacrament to adore?"

"You love me like this."

"Let me show you."

He danced out of my reach. "Go scrape your face and get handsome."

My grumbling was for show. I'd slept like a baby, properly warm on my left side where he curled around me like a vine, and any morning that greets me with a naked Jimmy Novak was a good one. I put on my navy and black dressing gown and carried a wire bucket of grooming needs down the hall to the bathroom.

Jimmy was dressed by the time I came back. He kissed me and stole my second to last cigarette before heading out to pray before the body of Christ.

I didn't walk into a church unless I'd run out of holy water.

Dozens of feet had pounded a path while marching up State Street for the white sale at Marshall Field's. Bargain hunters filled the booths at Joe's cafe, and I waited in line at the drugstore for another pack of Chesterfields. Two packs, since Jimmy would steal half of mine and even the drugstore closed down on a Sunday. I lit up and blew a plume of smoke waiting at the corner for the light to change.

State Street. I would miss it when my ticket to Hell got punched. I'd miss chess with my neighbor Kamal, miss the special at Joe's, would miss growling at the _Tribune_ , and God I would miss Jimmy.

I squared my shoulders and jaywalked to the tall white facade of the hotel where my client lived.

6.

"What floor, Sir?"

"Penthouse please, Amos."

Amos smiled and pressed the button, smiled again for the dime I pressed in his white-gloved hand, and I stepped through to knock at the glossy black door. Crowley's man opened it, and I left my shoe rubbers on a mat before I sullied the luxurious sprawl of white carpet. I handed Julian my hat, took his help in removing my coat, and I followed the sounds of a Gershwin tune.

Another servant tickled the ivories, and Crowley strode into the plush room on blue-ribbon legs. They flashed through the opening of a snowy white gown as she came closer, the marabou tufts on her slippers fluttering over red-painted toes to match her slim hands, to match her painted mouth.

God, what a dish. Curving and flawlessly golden, with her platinum hair out of a bottle and dark gull's-wing brows, every swaying inch of her an invitation. A thousand ships would have been honored to sail for her.

I couldn't imagine a sparrow lighting on her fingers.

"Dean." Both her hands in mine, her face tilted for a kiss near my left cheek, branding me with scarlet lips.

"Crowley. Thank you for inviting me to breakfast."

"The pleasure's all mine. Shall we do business?"

I tucked her hand in the crook of my elbow and took her to the breakfast table while Julian wheeled up a trolley. Covered dishes, champagne in a bucket, a pot of coffee smelling like seduction all on its own. I pulled out her chair and seated myself, trying not to drool over a cup that would make me mourn every burnt drop I ever tossed over my tongue at Joe's.

"Thank you, Julian." Crowley spread a napkin over her lap and nodded. Julian whisked the polished silver domes away, presenting breakfast.

"Eggs Benedict and the hair of a dog that hasn't bit me in two weeks."

A sheaf of platinum blonde hair swung back from her cheek as she smiled. "This particular dog's a 1929."

"Hell of a year."

"Indeed. You were still in the Men of Letters, were you not?"

"I can't place your accent, doll. It's killing me."

"Scotland," she answered. "What can you tell me of the scene?"

"Over breakfast?"

She cut a slice of her egg. "I can take it. Try your coffee first."

I took my first sip and God stroked my hair. It was smooth enough to hold in my mouth and taste, the un-sweet hint of fruit and flowers unfolding as I swallowed. Crowley watched every second like she saw something good to eat.

"I adore watching a beautiful man in pleasure."

"Don't blink, doll, I'm having another." But I held it back some and she knew it, spearing a slice of California orange on her solid silver fork with a little pout.

"Go on. If you won’t play, talk."

"It's a murder scene and a ritual site," I said. "I'll have to research. There were glyphs I didn't recognize painted in Kelly McIntyre's blood on the ground and on the walls."

"What were they for?"

"I don't know."

"Speculate," she ordered.

"Ritual sacrifice, possibly interrupted before drawing a complete summoning circle."

Crowley took a long, considering sip of her champagne. "Summoning. You're certain?"

The smile quirked up half my mouth. "I'm speculating."

"But you believe so."

"I haven't done an augury," I said. "And that's all I'll do. You need another gumshoe."

"There's no one else like you."

"Puts a crimp in your plans, I guess. But the Men of Letters are pissing circles around this. I'm not at my most charming when someone points a gun at me."

"I can provide incentive." She leaned over her plate. "A thousand dollars, cash."

"Not for my weight in diamonds."

She cocked a smoky black eyebrow and me and smirked, her dark eyes glowing red. "And your soul."

I swallowed my coffee very carefully.

Once upon a time, a handsome man came when I called him at a crossroads. He gave me exactly what I wanted for a price he wouldn't collect for ten years.

I expected to see him again in a couple of weeks.

"You hold my IOU?"

She tilted her head. "It wasn't hard to get. Do you want your soul back or not?"

I took a bite of my Eggs Benedict like I was thinking about it. "Plus expenses?"

Crowley threw back her head and laughed. "You're all right, Dean Winchester. It's a deal."

"Not so fast," I said. "I have conditions."


	2. Act II

1.

It was pretty simple: I don't do wetwork. I'd find the Half-Moon killer, but after that it was Crowley's mess. I would contact her as soon as I discovered his identity and location, and I would get the other half of the money and the payment that mattered.

_My soul. My soul_. It thumped along with the rhythm of my steps, the excited throb of my heart. We could go out west, Jimmy and I. We could live together.

We could get old.

Five hundred clams made a bulge in my back pocket that made me wish I could scurry into my bank and take care of it. Instead I swung my arms and strolled to State and Washington, ignoring my office on the corner to join the throng of shoppers streaming into Marshall Fields for the white sale. I didn't gawk at the crystal and I didn't linger over the displays, neatly avoiding the genteel hatred seething from women fighting for matching sheets and towels. I rode the escalator up to Men's Fashions on the third floor, which was no more peaceful. Husbands carried for wives who rifled through crisp white shirts, reading the tags for collar and sleeve length. A discreet sign noted the prices, and I just about dug into a display myself.

But I was here for a purpose, and tradition ruled my actions. I could only buy what I needed.

"May I help you?"

I recognized the clerk from the Wink, but we smiled together as strangers. "I'm looking for handkerchiefs. A box of six, please, in silk."

The last word halted him from his progress to the sale bins. "Silk?"

"Please."

He changed his reflexive moue to thinned lips. "We have none on a discounted offer."

"That's fine." Another rule--pay a fair price.

"This way, please. What color?"

"White."

He nodded as if he expected it, and I walked out of Marshall Fields with a box of white silk hankies finished with hand rolled hems and a receipt for ten dollars. I turned away from the Reliance Building and went north, moving past the theaters and walked into the steamy warmth of the cafe that served better hash than Joe's but closed at 3 o'clock.

I sat down at the long bar, ordered a cup of coffee, and picked up a copy of the _Chicago Tribune_ without grimacing too much. The Trib was wrong about the New Deal, and they're wrong about the War Aid Bill, and they'll be wrong again next week too, but it was here and I didn't have to put down the two cents to read it.

_"Senators to Fight F.D.R. Bill,"_ rang the headline. _"Demand for Unlimited Power over Arms Stuns Congress."_ Oh, boy.

I skipped it for my health and went to the obituaries.

The paper had written one themselves. Kelly "Nightingale" McIntyre, just shy of her 26th birthday, tragically lost before her time. She rose from obscure poverty when an executive from NBC heard her singing while washing dishes in her family's diner almost ten years ago.

I coated my tongue with a black brew that wasn't even a third cousin to the ambrosia I'd sipped at Crowley's table. The waitress flicked a glance as I scratched out notes on a pad, paging through the paper to scan the headlines.

There it is. _"Police Stymied by Half-Moon Killer; no new leads in case."_ I felt bad for the cop in charge getting dragged over the coals by some nosy parker with a deadline to meet. After noting the names of the other victims, I reckoned some dates, winked at the waitress and left her two bits for my rent. I strolled north across the river and stopped at Western Union long enough to write a message:

SAM

ALL WILL BE WELL

LETTER TO FOLLOW

I lifted my collar against the wind and aimed for the gothic, sloping shoulders of the Tribune Tower.

2.

An hour in the newspaper morgue netted me the sad story of Curtis Johnson, haberdasher, whose line of silk neckties had become a craze among the fashionable set. He'd been stretching to pay his rent in the Loop ten years ago. I read about Lawrence Hakes, a plumber who'd gone from employee to owner of a fleet of trucks, moving on up to the man who sits on his duff and collects the money in the last nine and a half years. Adelaide Lamont had been Adelaide Swift until she'd married Tyrone Lamont, a handsome actor who tread the boards and voiced _Get Dick Smith_ on WGN. She'd been his seamstress before they'd eloped, and she died a few months shy of her tenth wedding anniversary, just in case I needed a mallet to get the point.

Ten years was the standard. You got what you wanted for a decade, and then you paid the price. Was it worth plumbing trucks? Was it worth fashionable ties? Was it worth a man who didn't notice you until you'd given your soul?

I shied away from the last one.

Curtis Johnson, ten years. Lawrence Hakes, nine and a half. Adelaide Lamont, nine years, nine months. Kelly McIntyre, ten years. No cop would have figured this out, but Crowley had to know damn well what this pattern meant. She played me like a lute. I took my notes on the victims and their murder sites, and let the wind shove me around as I trudged back to my office.

I had work to do.

3.

Jimmy came back after I'd laid the last painted handkerchief out to dry, forcing the yarrow dye to set while stretched above the hot air of the radiator in my office. He stopped in his tracks and bit his lip as he stared at my Smith & Wesson. It was open and unloaded as I traded ordinary lead for something a little more potent.

"You've got trouble."

"Baby. It's okay. It's just protection."

"How bad?" He swept off his hat and coat, leaving them to swing on the coat tree next to the front door. He eyed the bullets like they would jump off the desk and bite him.

I’d etched each iron slug with markings so tiny I had to engrave between breaths. They were covered in sigils and symbols, each one beautiful and deadly.

I was pretty sure the bullets would work.

"How bad?"

"Demons, baby. I'm right in the middle of a turf war."

He crossed himself. "What do you mean?"

"The victims all found success about ten years ago. They made deals with a devil."

"Why does your client want—" He went pale as paper. "Oh no."

"Got it in one." I eased another bullet into the cylinder. "Some other demon's muscling in on Crowley's claims."

"I shouldn't have pushed you. You were right. What can I do?"

"If I'd known earlier, I'd have asked you to get me some holy water."

"You can't back out, can you." He wasn't asking.

I opened a drawer and drew out a nickel plated, mother of pearl handled .22. "Will you carry my spare revolver?"

He pressed his lips shut and ran his tongue over his teeth. "Do I have to?"

"You don't have to, but I'd feel a lot better if you did. Demons go for collateral damage. Pull up a chair, I'll show you how this works."

A swivel stool on wheels rested in the corner. Jimmy rolled it over and sat down.

"Each bullet is molded from iron, not lead. But not just any iron. It has to come from a meteor. Then they're quenched in an infusion of angelica, galangal, and rue. It has to be done on a Saturday, and begun while the moon's void of course--"

Jimmy fought a smile. "You're doing it again."

"I'm sorry baby. It means they're demon stoppers. I use a low-caliber weapon so the slug's less likely to go through and through, so the bullet can do its work, right?" I held one up and showed him the engraving on the bullet's nose. "Now if you have to shoot, you shoot, all right? Not just once. Keep firing, all six. Make them dead-dead. Aim for the body and fire until you run out of bullets."

Jimmy took the empty revolver from me and checked it over himself like I taught him. He loaded the bullets on his own, and sighed at it.

"It's ugly."

"I know, baby. But this is too dangerous. I would send you out of town if I could."

"I wouldn't go and you know it." He found a shoulder holster and stuck his arms in it, snugging the revolver in under his arm. "I can't wear this to work."

"Keep it on you or near you all the time." I put my thumb in the deep dimple of his chin and turned his face toward me. "It could save your life."

The look he gave me was full of regret. "I didn't know. I didn't know it would be this dangerous, I was just thinking of the money--"

I kissed him quiet. "It's okay. It'll be okay. Come and help me with those pictures. The last one I shot, I need your help with it. Then we'll go to Joe's and get a meal while the prints dry, what do you say?"

He sniffed and nodded. "All right. What happened to the last photo?"

"Moon came out in the middle of the exposure."

He snatched my pack of Chesterfields and lit one up. "It might take some masking. I'll try."

"That's all I want, baby. Now I'm going to teach you a verse you probably didn't learn in catechism class. You need this one on your lips, trust me."

"Let's hear it."

"Repeat after me: _Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus..."_

4.

Jimmy developed all the pictures his family took at home. His mother had given him a Kodak Brownie for his tenth birthday. He had a Rolliflex for his twenty-fifth from me. He was a genius with my Graflex, and 4x5 films were a joy to him.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

I handed him my last shot. He held it to the light, squinting through smoke.

"It's not so bad," he said. "A bit of dodging, and I think I can get you a fair picture. Want me to do this one first?"

"Please."

He crushed out his smoke and gestured at me to follow him into the darkroom. He was the maestro, and I his extra hands.

"Pass me the paper."

We were off, working in concert under photo-safe amber light. He wore the rod under his arm well enough for a man new to going heeled. I hoped it wouldn't grow on him. I hoped he'd never need to raise a hand in violence in his life.

"Let's try it." He slid the 8x10 into the stop bath. "Timer."

I set it, and Jimmy set up the next exposure. I washed the print, fixed it, and hung it with two clips. Jimmy kept my hands busy, handing me another exposure to stop and fix.

"This was her blood?"

"Yeah."

"And it had been washed off?"

"Yeah, three days before."

"That's one hell of a spell, Dean. I don't have to be one of your Men of Letters to know that."

"You'd have made a good one, you know. If your father had been one--"

"Would they have known about him here?"

"If he had been with the chapter in Warsaw, you would have started training before you were out of short pants."

"Unless that's why he left." Jimmy shook his head. "It doesn't matter. My little knack comes in handy, and you can teach me, can't you?"

"Any time you want to listen to me lecture."

He handed me another print and I rinsed it off. He started the last one in the enlarger, and got on my other side, taking over the fixer. "But if he had, if I had..."

I glanced at him. "What?"

"Would we have met? Would we be--"

If he'd been a Man of Letters, I wouldn't even be dirt on his shoe. He would know what I'd done to be expelled. He wouldn't look at me like I was everything, in that way I didn't deserve.

"You're wonderful, Dean. You don't let anybody knock you down. To hell with them all. Okay?"

"Okay."

Jimmy shot me a smile and took a print to the drying line. I moved up the last two to their trays, but Jimmy didn't come back to stand at my right and wash photos.

"Jimmy?"

He stood at the drying line and studied the print he'd dodged, a little line between his brows. His whole posture altered--he slung his jaw forward as a storm gathered in his expression, his brow set low over squinting eyes and stern lines from the corner of his mouth. I'd never seen him look like that. He looked--

Violent.

"Jimmy?"

He shook himself, rose up taller, and shrugged. "Sorry. Got lost in thought."

"You sure did." I put the last print in the fixer, and handed him the next one to go on the line. He put it up and stared at all of them, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

"Hey. Baby. What's eating you?"

"I don't like this," he said. "I don't like it one bit."

"That makes two of us. You don't have to look at those."

But he studied each one. The moment I put the last print up on the line he made for the door.

"I've got to go back to St. Stanislaus.”

“What?”

He looped his scarf around his neck. “Mrs. Kowalski had something come up. I’m taking her hour."

I didn't want him out of my sight. I couldn't go to his church. "Will you come back?"

"I'll come back," he said. "If something comes up, I'll call."

"Got the exorcism memorized?"

"The whole thing." He came back to me and gave me a kiss. "I'll bring back some holy water, okay?"

"Good idea." I held on, just for a second. One more kiss. "Call me if something comes up."

"I will." The coat settled over his gun, the cut skimming over the butt. "When do you have to do your augury?"

"The hour before sunset."

"That's almost now."

"I better do it in the darkroom, then. Go on, beat it."

I watched his shadow through the frosted glass, listened for the chime of the elevator, waited until it closed before I went back into the darkroom to run the spell.

There's no sense in casting a spell before I'd seen the prints, but the sun was sinking, and I wouldn't have a better hour until just before dawn. The moon ruled secrets, and this was her hour. I went over the damp prints with a magnifying glass, writing notes in my book to study later, moving from the print Jimmy had dodged to the first photo I'd taken, and then I saw it.

I thought it was just a smudge until I looked at it. Footprints, tracking blood away from the gory scene. And on the bricks almost at the edge of my print, a smear that could have come from a hand.

The Half-Moon killer had left a trail.

5.

The glass had been swept up, the patch of alley re-lit, and I had to scrape the tip of my plumb in the mortar between cracks for a dried flake of Kelly McIntyre's blood. This time it was me and my pendulum in a variant of my luminous blood spell--it still used the radium and mushroom paint and my blood, but on the plumb instead of the ground. It used the principles of sympathy to align my blood to the trail: blood to blood again, and my own sensitivity to read the signs... never mind. I would dowse the trail and find out where it led.

I tied my scarf a little tighter, pulled my earband down to cover the lobes, and took off my right glove with a sigh.

The pendulum had barely started swinging when a figure came out of the shadows. I rolled my eyes, expecting the little one to follow after.

But this was someone different. Tall, broad-shouldered, the brim of his hat obscuring all. The light shifted to shine on half his face and I forgot how to breathe. His chin, his mouth...even ten years older and six inches taller, I knew.

"Sam?"

He didn't have to say anything. My brother. Here, when I'd sent him a telegram to find him in Ohio. I was smiling so hard I could feel the cold on my molars. "Sammy. It _is_ you."

He stopped about six feet away. "You shouldn't be here, Dean."

"What are you doing in Chicago?"

"Field work."

"You transferred out of Ohio? Are you here, here? To stay? You can't be."

My heart thumped in my chest like it had to carry the whole band singing in my veins, but Sam looked at me like--

No. Not him.

I resurrected my smile. "I just sent you a telegram--"

He cut me off with pinched up frown. "You're not a Man of Letters any more, Dean. You need to stay out of this case."

"Nuts to that," I said. "You don't know what's on the line."

"Do you have any idea what you're chasing, here?"

"Right now? A blood trail. What's at the end? Beats me. I guess I'll know when I see it."

"You'll take the risk? For what?"

"My soul. I do this job, I'll get it back."

His lip curled. "Wetwork?"

"Location only. Why's the Men of Letters so keen on this?"

"You don't need to know. But I know who you have to be dealing with, if your soul is on the line." He shook his head and stuck out his jaw, like he did when he didn't want to conjugate Latin verbs or take his turn washing the bathroom. "Demons, Dean?"

"Their money's green. The completion bonus is hard to resist."

Sam tilted his head back and rolled his eyes at the stars. "The trouble with you is, you can't accept fate."

"And neither should you."

He squared off in front of me, feet planted in the snow and arms akimbo. "Haven't you learned when enough is enough?"

"Keep your hair on, little brother. You'll go gray."

He didn't smile back. "You have no idea what you're dealing with. You don't think past the next moment. You don't think of what you--you're going to Hell, Dean! Because you wouldn't--" He stopped, his face drawn into furious tension. "I was in _Heaven._ "

"I would do anything for you. And I did."

"And you thought I'd want you to die for me?"

"I don't have to die, Sammy. Didn't you get that part?"

He clenched his jaw. "I heard you."

"So work with me huh, what do you say? I'm about to chase a lead. Don't you want to see where it goes?"

"I tried to conjure her spirit," Sam said. "No joy."

I held up the pendulum. "I had something else in mind."

"But if I couldn't conjure--"

"Killer left a blood trail. I mean to follow it. You want in, or not?"

"You invent that spell?"

"I sure did."

Sam raised his chin and stuck gloved hands in his pockets. "Sinclair said no one had the skill to be an auspex like you in years," Sam said. "He said you were a trailblazer."

I didn't want to hear Sinclair's compliments. "You can't tell him, Sammy. If he knows you worked with me--"

"You think I don't know that?" His eyebrows smoothed out and he nodded. "Go ahead. Do your spell."

"I don't know how this is going to work, exactly."

Sam was polite enough not to listen as I whispered the words. I coated the point of the pendulum in blood, and it--

It pointed, straining at the chain. That defied physics. That was...

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah," Sam agreed.

"Well, I guess we go this way."

The pendulum didn't care about the buildings in the way. It shifted as I moved so it could keep pointing, and I wondered how far we'd have to go, how I would pass this off if we had witnesses.

Never mind, though. Sam was by my side, just as I'd promised him when he was seven and the Men of Letters had taken me away to train. I told him secrets when I came home for Christmas, taught him little magics I probably shouldn't have. But he was going to be one of us. When he was old enough to come to the chapterhouse, it would be me and him. A team, always.

If I caught this demon, we could do it again. Work together again.

I wondered if I could tell him the truth about Jimmy.

We had a trail to follow and we moved in step, past darkened shops and cars parked under a dusting of snow. This part of town rolled the sidewalks up at six. Lights glowed in the apartments above the shops, but no one peered out the window at us, cozy and warm and listening to _Everyman's Theater_ on the radio. I shook my head and went where the pendulum pointed. Down the sidewalk and to the corner, where the plumb went wildly in circles and we stood on a smear right in the middle of the crosswalk.

"This is where it ends."

Sam bent at the waist to peer down at the road. "He collapsed. Right here."

"And didn't get back up." I turned in a slow circle. "Like a puppet with its strings cut." That sure fit my theory, didn't it? Demons rode their hosts hard, uncaring of human frailties, and then dumped them like old coats.

"Why come this way, though? What's here?"

I shrugged. Warm air fled from the collar of my coat. "Going to make a call? Going to a car?"

A few vehicles sat parked on the street. None of them had more than a crust of snow. This street had shops. Peckham and Birch Shoes, van Horne fashions on the corner, Morrison's Fine Cigars in the middle of the street. I turned in a slow circle and emptied my mind, looking for a sign--

"Dean!"

Sam yanked me out of way. A motorist drove around us, honking his horn and yelling.

He grabbed me by the shoulders, his face white. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Trying to find a hunch."

"In the middle of the road?" he huffed. "You need a keeper."

"You gonna watch over me, Ted?"

He ignored that and pointed. "Your pendulum."

"Huh?" Sure enough, it pointed at the smear in the road. "This spell's got a bit of pepper. Traffic accident?"

"Maybe," Sam said. "Is there a spirit?"

I shoved the pendulum into my pocket. It tugged, attracted to the stain. I'd have to refine the incantation. "No. There wasn't at the murder scene, either."

"The killer might not have died. He could be in a hospital somewhere."

"That's something I can't learn without greasing the right cop." I tapped out a cigarette and offered the pack to him.

"I don't smoke."

"More for me." I lit up and eased my glove back on my frozen hand. "Look. The Men of Letters has a stake in this. I don't want to get in your way but I can't just walk. So work with me, what do you say? We'll keep it between us."

Sammy's mouth pinned back, his whole face stiff with indecision. Well. That wasn't a no.

"Don't answer now. You know where to find me?"

"I read all your letters," he said.

My chest tingled with warmth. "You could write back, too. Maybe after this."

"I have to go, Dean." He made good on his words with a heel-turn, walking away from me.

He read all my letters.

"You know where to find me," I called after him. "You can't miss it."

Sammy's shoulders hunched up higher, blocking the wind.


	3. Act III

1.

 

By the time WMAQ signed off for the night I paced through my rooms, watching out the window for Jimmy. By the time my clock clicked its hands together at midnight, I was trying to remember words I hadn't spoken since I was a child. The empty spot where Jimmy had parked his Model C gathered snow, the window icy against my forehead.

I found a dry scarf and shrugged into my coat and stuffed one of the silk handkerchiefs in my pocket. If he wasn't at St. Stanislaus, if something had happened--

_(I've got nothing to promise you, I've got nothing to give, but **please--)**_

The phone rang.

I leapt for it. "Jimmy?"

"It's me."

I caught myself on the wall. "Jimmy, oh thank God."

"Don't worry about me. I got into a discussion with Father Benedict. He's asking my opinion about the chapel restoration. There are such beautiful sketches."

Jimmy caught in conversation. That's all. He was safe. "You scared me to death. I was just about to go looking for you."

"I know, I'm sorry. Is it all right if I borrow your camera to take photographs for the records? I said I would, but the camera you bought me will do."

"Of course." Anything. "When are you coming home?"

"I'm going to sing Matins with them. Don't wait up."

"I will if I like."

"Mother."

Someone could hear us. "Come home soon."

"I love you," he said, and as he hung up I wondered if he was still wearing my gun.

I felt strange--rubbery and relieved, but I jumped at every little sound the office made. My liquor cabinet stored a bottle of bourbon, half-full. A generous tumbler joined me on a trip to the record player. Gershwin tickled at the edges of my mind, and the best way to cure a phantom song was to listen to it, all seventeen minutes.

Clarinet and piano wove around my head. Jimmy was coming home and everything was okay. I enjoyed a second drink and a smoke, stretched out on my scroll-armed, camel-backed sofa. The upholstery was stained, worn through on the center cushion, but it creaked amicably under my back. My copy of _The Great Gatsby_ sat on an angle on the coffee table, and I picked it up to read about Jay watching the flashing green light across the water.

Jay Gatsby knew a lot about hope. It felt a little painful, on account of it not being a sure thing. In fact there was almost no hope, which made that tiny flashing beacon all the more precious. I'd read this book a dozen times, two dozen. I always came back. I always held my breath, waiting for Daisy to come to him. Jay hoped every single time and I hoped right along with him, even though I knew the end.

I never got up for a third bourbon, since the bottle was empty. My clock clicked one, and Jimmy would be home in a minute. I rested the book on my chest and thought about how Jimmy was better than Daisy any day, closing my eyes to the scrape and click of the needle bumping against the record label.

I woke up with a crick in my neck and the odor of the wind in summer, just before lightning strikes an open field. Jimmy stood in my parlor, still in his coat. I got up on one elbow and the room tilted, but I didn't mind.

I reached out my hand. "Jimmy."

He shifted his weight and turned toward the record player, still bumping along the label. He lifted the needle arm and put it back on the cradle and by the time he turned back to face me I had my revolver out, hammer back and pointed.

That wasn't Jimmy.

_"Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii--"_ Those were the words I knew by heart, spilling from my mouth with thoughtless ease. Don't move. I don't want to shoot you. Don't you move, I don't--

"Be not afraid, Dean Winchester."

That wasn't Jimmy's voice. It scraped the depths of Jimmy's throat, alien and other. A voice of Hell.

_"--omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostri--"_

He lifted Jimmy's hand and swept it to one side, barely stirring the air. My persuader went right along with it, threatening only my bookshelf.

Every light in the room flared alive. I squinted at Jimmy's face. He looked back at me impassively, his expression devoid of any human feeling.

The lightbulbs exploded in a shower of sparks. Light flooded through my windows, burning flashbulb-hot, and his shadow writhed, reaching to the ceiling in a spread of half a dozen black wings.

I shielded my eyes and he said it again. "Be not afraid."

"You're not Jimmy. Who are you?"

"Castiel."

Darkness fell, and green spots danced in front of my eyes. "What have you done with Jimmy?"

He didn't move. "He's here."

"Let me talk to him."

"You have work to do, Dean Winchester."

"Are you kidding me?"

The creature in Jimmy tilted his head. "I have work for you."

This wasn't happening. I wasn't standing here taking a job from an angel the same day I took a job from a demon. "That's real sweet but my dance card's a little full at the moment."

"Jimmy is asking me to explain. He's sorry he didn't tell you before."

"Tell me what? That he's an angel?"

"Jimmy's a man. A...host." Jimmy's hands rose and I cringed at their stilted gesture, the awkward flump of Jimmy's limbs as the angel sighed. "I haven't spent much time in control of the flesh. It's...disorienting."

The wrongness twitched over my skin. Jimmy's face, but harsher, his expressions grim and heavy with judgement. He wasn't Jimmy. He was nothing like Jimmy.

"You're possessing him."

"With his consent," Castiel said. "He's a very godly man."

"If you forget about the sodomy and the perversion."

Castiel grimaced. "The revulsion for homosexual love is a human opinion. How you perform intercourse is irrelevant. Jimmy keeps love in his heart. He's generous. He's more merciful than me."

"I get the picture. So what, you have work for me. So you took Jimmy over, and--how long have you been watching him?"

"Jimmy and I have been together for a long time, Dean. Longer than you've known him."

I was catching flies, my jaw hung down so low. "Together? You mean--"

"Jimmy is powerful enough to contain me, and has consented to guide me through my displacement and my penance."

"Your displacement? You were--"

"Expelled from Heaven," Castiel said. "Thousands of us were all evicted."

"Why?"

Castiel shrugged. "That's a long story."

There was my pack of Chesterfields. I shook one out and lit it, rubbing at my eyes. "Okay, let's go back to together. You...ride along in his body. When we, I mean when me and Jimmy--"

"When you make love."

I looked away.

"It's literal, you know. The body produces substances that flood your brain with hormones that produce emotions when you share sexual intimacy, building and reinforcing feelings of intense affection and trust--love, in short."

"Okay, now I know how Jimmy feels when I do that," I said. "Anyway. When we're in bed together. You've been there?"

"I absent myself, though I am to some degree aware of Jimmy's physiology at all times."

"So you know about the--"

"Yes."

I covered my face and hoped I was dreaming.

"I assure you, Jimmy enjoys it a great deal."

"I'm not hearing this," I said. "Skip it. I'm going to forget we even had this conversation. Jimmy didn't tear out of here to pinch-hit for Wanda Kozlowski. It was the pictures, wasn't it."

"You _are_ good at this," Castiel said. "I need you to find the Half-Moon killer, Dean."

"Peachy. What for?"

"He has to be stopped. You saw the markings in the picture."

"You mind telling me what that is?"

"Can you tell me what purpose a ritual serves through the drawing of its space?"

"Not without already knowing it. Like the binding circle under the rug you're standing on--"

His face turned stern. "You don't have one in your reception area. A demon could just walk in and--"

"It's on the underside of the chairs."

Castiel conceded the point with a nod. "Go on."

"There are markings in the photographs I don't recognize. Now either they're invented, and we're out of luck, or--"

Castiel had the knack of raising one eyebrow. Jimmy couldn't do that. "Or?"

"Or the information is so obscure you'd only find it in certain libraries in the hands of a group like...well, a secret magical society."

"And we're still out of luck," Castiel said. "Can we go back to Kelly McIntyre's murder site?"

"The Men of Letters are watching it."

"Perhaps an older one. Or--" Castiel froze, staring at nothing I could see. He breathed, but the emptiness of his face made me see it as Jimmy's again, and--

"Jimmy? Baby? Can you talk to me?"

He didn't even twitch. Maybe I couldn't trust what was happening. Maybe he wasn't what he claimed. He didn't look too alarmed when I told him he was standing on top of a binding circle.

Jimmy's body sighed, and Castiel pressed his lips together. "Get your coat."

"Why?"

"And your camera. There's been another murder."

2.

I stood up and the room spun. I teetered, fought the force, but I landed on the sofa with a thump.

"You're drunk."

"I was thirsty."

Castiel rolled his eyes and reached out two fingers. I shied away but he planted them on my temple, and my head cleared. A headache flared for an instant, then vanished.

"Drink a tall glass of water," he said.

"What did you do to me?" I couldn't really stand around for an explanation. I shifted my weight from one leg to another. "Never mind."

I all but ran for the bathroom. I was sober as a judge, but I took Castiel's advice and drank handfuls of cold water from the tap. What had he done?

"I dragged all the toxins from your drinking out of your blood and flushed them through your kidneys."

I got water down the front of my shirt. Castiel stood there, laden with my coat, my hat, and my Graflex. The pockets of my coat bulged with film cartridges and a box of sashalites.

"How did you-"

"Translocation is a process of dismantling the atoms that make up a physical body and attendant objects, and reassembling them in the location you wish."

"Okay, pretend I didn't understand that."

Was he smirking at me? "I teleported myself and your belongings to this room. We have to hurry."

"Where's the fire?"

"The murder, Dean. The birds are a bit sluggish, but it woke them. My fault, for tagging them with a particle of my consciousness, but it seemed necessary. Please put on your coat."

"Where are we going?"

Castiel looked up at the ceiling, and for a second he was Jimmy, reckoning something in his head. "The zoo. I think it's the zoo. More of them are awake. Button your coat, it's snowing. I forgot your galoshes."

He vanished. I was still gaping at the space where he'd been when he returned to it, kneeling down to help me put on rubber overshoes.

"Come on, I can dress myself," I grumbled, but he wouldn't quit. He gripped me by the ankle and we dissolved.

I never realized how much I was a body until I didn't have one, how deeply I was my conscious thought until it disappeared and I was nothing and nowhere and not.

And then I was, and that was when I became afraid.

"Castiel." My stomach lurched, but I didn't get sick, thank God. "Never do that to me again."

"It's a long walk back to the Reliance Building." Castiel turned in a circle. "That way. The birds are still agitated."

Fresh fallen snow crunched under his feet. I sunk into the drift and gritted my teeth. Snow gathered around my bare ankles and gathered inside my unlaced shoes, but I kept on. The shadows ahead took on weird shapes. Birds flew past me and lighted in the skeletal branches of trees--gray-blue jays, little sparrows, pigeons and grackles all flocked together, feathers be damned.

"Castiel?"

"We're too late," he said.

I caught up to him, and turned away to empty my stomach.

3.

Blood painted the snow in intricate detail, a pentagram within a heptagram bounded by a triple circle, and within the rings sigils glistened. The body in the center of it all steamed, warm but still and staring and so, so red. He was big, with the fat that barrels up the body of a strong man once he hits forty and isn't smashing heads any more. He was naked as a jaybird, lying spread eagle in the middle of the circle painted in his own blood. In the center of his chest was a square of those same letters I didn't recognize from the alley.

Blood pooled between his legs where a circular dent in the snow gave the sign of a bowl meant to catch blood from a neat wound in his thigh. Femoral artery. A quick death shattered my assumptions of torture.

I stripped off my glove and let the pendulum swing from my bare fingers. "Spirit of this man, speak with me."

The plumb lay still.

"What in the hell," I muttered. He should have been here, lingering. The connection between a body and its soul lingers for three days, at least.

"Gone," I said. "Already passed on. How can that be?"

"The soul is gone," Castiel agreed. "The killer took it."

Actually, that made perfect sense. If this guy kissed a devil at the crossroads for his fondest wish, and I was right about the Half-Moon Killer embezzling on Crowley's funds, there would be no soul to commune with.

I opened the Graflex and got to work, adjusting the shutter speed and the f-stop and put the camera in front of my face. The sight rendered upside-down and backwards became an image with a frame around it, a little less real.

I fell into the routine I used when I photographed scenes: North. East. South. West. And then the details. The routine kept me moving around the area like a wind up doll: shoot, slide the shield over the exposure, flip the cartridge or pocket it for a new one, unscrew the flashbulb, replace with fresh. Move to the next position. Shoot.

The birds gathered around Castiel, lighting on the ground at his feet, calling from branches overhead. Wingbeats cut the air as they flapped closer, landing somewhere else to keep chattering. Not a one of them crossed into the defile where the body lay among the markings in the snow, their delicate tracks neatly skirting the boundaries.

Tracks.

I saw the print of my rubbers, a stack of chevrons across the instep and heel. There were the marks Castiel made with Jimmy's shoes--four pointed stars alternating like polka dots.

There were no tracks leading to the site or away. Inside the circle were small footprints, with deep impressions made by narrower heels.

I put it together with the lower eyeline at the alley scene, and it clicked.

"A woman. The Half-Moon Killer's a woman."

How? The stiff in the snow was two hundred pounds if he was an ounce. How could a woman with prints this dainty haul that much meat to this spot?

A demon could. Crowley could probably move the piano in her creamy white hotel suite if she put her mind to it. If the demon was jumping from puppet to puppet we'd have to catch her red handed.

Castiel shoved his hands in his pockets. "They can't call her that now, can they? This isn't a Half-Moon night."

"It's waxing gibbous. Planetary hour...Saturn, off the top of my head." I stood back and regarded the body. I raised my camera and found his face in the rangefinder, and shot a picture. It was out of order, but I would know it in the darkroom. "She broke pattern. Why?"

Castiel looked thunderous. "What does it matter?"

"Maybe it doesn't," I said. "But all the other murders happened when the moon squared the sun on approach. If I had the time of death I could compare the astrology, look for a pattern there, but there is a pattern. It's part of the reason why she's doing this. The deaths are part of something bigger."

"All we need to do is find--"

"Hey! Hands in the air!"

A cop in a peaked cap and brass buttons marched for us, aiming his revolver in our general direction. Castiel moved for me, and the policeman fired.

"No!"

But Castiel kept moving, putting his body in front of mine. The shots didn't even make him flinch, two three four five bullets just like that, but the last one made me clutch at my shoulder. Warm blood spilled down my skin, but before I could finish thinking _I've been sho-_ I was nothing once more, nothing and nobody and nowhere.

4.

The pain didn't hit until we dropped out of the outer darkness. I clapped a hand over my shoulder and squeezed, hissing at the aliveness of it. I was real again, and I tilted my head back in reflexive thanks.

Frescoes decorated the arched ceiling of the nave of a church. Saints and angels looked down on me and all I'd done, all I was, and part of me shrank back from their judgement. The rest gave their painted faces a cocky grin and a wink.

This was a hell of a time to get cute. My life poured out of the hole in my shoulder, but I held on to Castiel, tried to keep him from falling. Castiel held onto me, planting two fingers on my head.

I tried to move away but he wouldn't let me. The pain in my shoulder disappeared. Even the hole in my coat mended. Jimmy would have been dead on the ground after catching that much lead if Castiel hadn't been driving Jimmy's body.

"You were shot."

Castiel shrugged. "It's not important. Come and sit down."

"You were shot five times."

"It didn't harm me. Jimmy's not even scarred. Sit."

I shook my head. "I have to go. I don't belong here."

"All are welcome in the house of God, Dean. Sit down."

The pew was firm and uncomfortable. I tried not to fidget as the priest sang a holy office. It was beautiful enough to make an angel cry. Castiel waited patiently through the service. Didn't he feel it? Did he feel anything, anything at all?

"Yes. It's refreshing. Stop fidgeting."

So he had Jimmy's trick too. Or was it Jimmy's trick?

He shot me a look and I folded my hands, eyes forward.

The priest could have been on the radio. He could have been at the opera house. His voice filled the huge space in a way that hushed me, even though I wanted to get up and breathe air that wasn't redolent with frankincense, get out of here before they saw me and knew I had no right--

"All are welcome in the house of God, Dean."

I closed my eyes and tried not to think too loudly.

The chant ended. The priest was young, my age probably, with a shining face and his clear voice speaking prayers in Latin. I followed, but it was the usual _God almighty, have mercy on us_ stuff. Castiel had to shake my shoulder when it was over.

Icewater dripped down the back of my neck, my nerves jangling. I followed Castiel deeper into the church than I wanted to go, but he headed straight for the priest who had given the service, the priest who stared holes into me.

I put my chin up and met his eye. "Fine service, Father."

He squinted. "You have an unusual companion, Castiel."

I raised my eyebrows, but he turned around and gestured at us to follow.

"Why are we here?" I asked, but I followed.

"Father Benedict can help us," Castiel said. "He's a host."

"He's--oh, shit."

Waiting in the sacristy, clad in black save a chip of white at their throats were Sam and the little guy from the other night. They stared hard at me, and the little one snapped his fingers. "You. You need to get your nose out of our business."

Sam put up a quelling hand. "That's no proper greeting for a lost soul, Father."

Heh. So much for the sham.

Father Benedict eyed them and shook his head. "You should have left the costumes at the chapterhouse, gentlemen. Your current attire is a touch...disrespectful."

"Our work takes us to many places," Sam said. "Apologies. No disrespect is intended."

"Are you even confirmed?"

Sam glanced at the toes of his shoes. "Episcopalian."

Father Benedict sighed. "You should know better. You're Men of Letters, anointed and initiated. You are connected to this man."

He nodded toward me and I straightened up. "He's--"

"My brother," Sam said. "It's a complicated story. He's meddling in affairs that don't concern him."

"No doubt," Father Benedict said. "Excuse me, gentlemen. I'll be right with you. Take the time to reflect upon deception."

I followed Castiel through the door to Father Benedict's office, flashing a smirk at the short one.

Two chairs faced a beautiful hand-carved desk bare of everything save a blotter, a Bible, a sheaf of paper with engraved letterhead, and a glossy black pen. You couldn't see the walls for the books, arranged behind glass-fronted doors with locks. I recognized a few spines on the shelf behind the pater's desk. Well. Well, well.

Father Benedict closed the door, made a gesture, and the room felt...muffled.

He was a magician. And he was as thunderous as Castiel, the jut of his brow crumpled and low. "Castiel, why have you brought me this damned soul?"

Not one to put a gentle edge on it. "Oh, I see we've got our wigs off."

Castiel put a quelling hand on my freshly healed shoulder. "He's a private investigator and a good friend of Jimmy Novak's."

He flicked me an irritated glance. "I can't help him any more than you can. He knows our business?"

"He was already on the case."

"I help where I can," I said. "Good works, and all that."

He stared me down and the way he cocked his head made me think of a bird with fierce dark eyes. "You were expelled from the order. Your soul is forfeit. Which came first?"

"Jimmy tells me you're renovating the chapel where you adore the Eucharist. He's very excited."

"I asked you a question."

I shot him a smile that was more like a show of teeth. "See, I was trying to avoid pointing out that it was rude."

Castiel stepped between us. "There was another murder, Zaphkiel."

That stopped him in his tracks. "You know this already? You're sure?"

"We were at the scene. Castiel knew when it happened." I cocked my head. "How did you know?"

Castiel waved it away. "The markings were completed on this body. We only have a partial record. Dean took photographs but they still need to be developed."

Zaphkiel sat on the edge of his desk. He was better with the limits of his host's body than Castiel. His movements were smooth, like he took them for granted, but the flesh wasn't part of him. it...fit on him, like a good suit.

"I'd like to see the signs and markings used."

"We can have the photos for you tomorrow after evening mass...if you don't mind Jimmy missing out. He's better at printing than I am." I shot Castiel a look. "Can Jimmy can come out and play?"

"He's anxious to talk to you," Castiel said. "For now, we should go."

"I have to see to those gentlemen outside." Father Benedict--Zaphkiel--nodded towards the warded door. "Their only interest is in helping."

"They won't work with me."

"I wasn't going to suggest it. But for what it's worth, I wish there was something I could do about your soul."

A little disquieting voice wondered if all the angels could see the condition of my soul. And if they could, did Jimmy know?

I shook it off. He would have asked me.

"Thanks, Padre. That's real nice of you to say." I nodded at Castiel. "Do your vanishing act."

He squeezed my shoulder just before I ceased to exist.


	4. Act IV

1.

We re-existed in the same patch of alleyway where I'd begun this case. Pigeons stared down at us from old dovecotes, residents of the home they'd known for generations. I took a step back and found a smoke. All this translocation had me on edge.

"What are we doing back here?"

"This is where you found the first square."

"Like the one on the guy's chest," I said. "Yeah. Right here."

Castiel glared at the wall and I half expected it to straighten up and look right. The angel in Jimmy's body turned away and headed for the street.

"What now?"

"Canvassing. Who saw what, when."

"I tried the butcher." I trotted to catch up with him. "He wouldn't speak of it. And it's Sunday. All the shops are closed."

"All those shopkeepers are headed to Mass."

He was right. Families in lint-brushed coats and shiny shoes gathered on the sidewalk in flocks, waiting for fathers to bring the car around. They glanced left and right to make sure people noticed the fine cut of their coats and the well tended tresses of their daughters, tallying points for which mother wore the smartest hat.

We waded into the river of Joneses and I took the lead, the smiling, sympathetic cop to Castiel's thunder and judgement.

"How do you do," I touched my hatbrim to a woman in a green pillbox. I opened my wallet and showed her my license, but she concentrated more on my smile. "Do you know who collapsed in the street, about on Monday morning?"

She glanced at the intersection and lifted a gloved hand to her mouth. A hit. She hadn't just heard, she'd seen, a real eye-witness.

"I shouldn't say." She glanced at the child hanging off her left hand, gloved in a green to match her hat. "An awful business."

"Was she hurt?" I asked. "Was there an accident?"

She glanced at other families gathering in the street. What must they think of her, accosted by strangers on the way to church? "I wouldn't like to speak of it in front of the children."

A sleek Chevrolet Master prowled up to the curb, and the man driving leapt out with the engine idling. "What's this about? Mildred? Is this man bothering you?"

"He wants to know about Mathilda," she said. "But the children--"

Mathilda. I filed it away and turned my attention to the man. "Just a few questions."

"All right, I'll handle it. Get in the car." He had a brutish look about him, even in his navy Sunday best. Big bare hands with scars across the knuckles. Maybe he'd knock a man down on a Sunday, if he thought that man troubled his wife.

"What's this about?"

"We're looking for Mathilda's family," I said. "I'm an investigator for an attorney who believes there's a substantial damages case."

He chewed it over before he bought it. "Why do you want to see the van Hornes?"

Van Horne. The dress shop on the corner, with the smart ladies' suits and a hat like the one perched on the missus. She'd been on her way back home when she collapsed in the street.

Castiel spoke up. "We're looking to assess her condition and inform the family of their rights in legal matters."

"Money in it, eh? It won't bring Mathilda back, but money always helps."

"It always does," I agreed.

"She has a beau," the man said. "That's probably what she was doing, out of her bed in the middle of the night. She shouldn't have snuck out, but--" he shrugged one shoulder. "Nobody deserves that. Broke her mind, poor thing. Hasn't uttered a single word since it happened, though everybody knows anyway."

"She's in a mental hospital?"

He glanced at his watch. "She's up at Dunning. Maybe they can cure her. I don't know if I would. She was covered in blood when they found her, but otherwise, not a scratch. How she got away from that fiend I'll never know."

Had the demon let her go, when he was done using her body to butcher Kelly McIntyre? I thought of being in that alley, covered in blood, running away from what she'd done—or what her body had done while someone else drove.

"Poor girl," I said. "Someone's got to pay for that."

The window of the Chevrolet rolled down. "Fred," the missus said. "We'll be late."

"Coming." The man looked back at me. "If there's somebody to sue, you sue them, you hear me? Take them for everything. Mathilda was a sweet girl."

He stepped over the slush in the gutter and got inside the car. I glanced at Castiel, who'd stood dumb beside me the whole time.

"Dunning's a long way north."

He stared at a bunting without really focusing on it, then nodded. "I know where it is. Do you want another cigarette before we go?"

"Not so fast," I said. "I've had enough of your teleportation trick. We're taking my car."

 

2.

The heater coughed out a little warm air as I drove my square and sturdy '31 Chevy north and west to the state hospital. I didn't like asylums, and I didn't like this one, which didn't even have the gothic charm of nuthouses built earlier. This is where they dumped the lost and unwanted--the maniacs, the depressives, the hysterical...

The homosexual, if I wanted to hit the target. It was a sickness, they said, but nobody who had vanished from the Wink had ever come back to say they were cured. Funny how nobody they decide is crazy ever seems to get better.

I had no reason to like Dunning.

Castiel asked the nurse at the desk where to find Mathilda van Horne. She took us up to her room, where a well dressed woman in gray wept quietly while she brushed the buckwheat colored hair of a young girl sitting by the window. The space behind the girl’s eyes was for rent. Fat black-throated chickadees gathered on the sill, tiny heads bobbing as they jostled closer to the window, failing to get her notice.

The older woman stopped brushing her daughter's curls. "Can I help you?"

I tipped the hat I wasn't wearing, ducking my head in chivalrous greeting. "Mrs. van Horne? We're sorry to disturb you and your daughter. We're investigators, and we wanted to get an official assessment of her condition."

Mathilda was a beautiful girl. Instead of the shapeless hospital gowns and bathrobes other inmates shuffled in, she wore a pale blue blouse with dozens of pintucks and tiny buttons, a knife-pleated skirt draped over her knees, expensive powder blue kid leather shoes on her silk-stockinged feet. Her empty eyes were framed by mascara coated lashes, her slack mouth painted pink, suitable for a young miss. She lacked the animation I took for granted in people until it was entirely absent.

"She looked at me this morning," Mrs. van Horne had a handkerchief out to dab Mathilda's chin in a gesture she'd already mastered. Her voice trembled. "When I gave her breakfast. She eats, if you feed her. She doesn't like onions in her hash browns."

I interpreted this non-sequitur with ease. "And she looked at you when you fed her hash browns?"

She went back to shaping her daughter's hair. "I shouldn't make such a fuss. It could have been a reflex. The doctor says--" she deflated.

"Never lose hope, Ma'am. If dislike of onions stimulates her, that can only be a good sign." I kept my smile gentle. "This is my partner, Jimmy Novak."

She flashed all the smile she could manage in the circumstances.

"Now Mrs. van Horne, I know this will be painful but if I may ask, do you remember anything unusual about that night? Anything at all."

She leaned forward to dab Mathilda's chin. "I--" she shook her head. "Nothing."

"It could be something you experienced that you think no one will believe," I said. "There's often a feeling something isn't right when your loved ones are in danger."

She stayed silent for a long time, looking at me and Castiel before she spoke. "It was a dream."

Bingo. "What did you dream?"

"Mathilda's door. I dreamed I was in the hallway, and Mathilda's door glowed around the cracks. It was so bright. I opened the door and she was bathed in light. I almost couldn't see her. And then she was gone."

"And you had this dream that night."

"Sometimes I think it was the angels, taking her away from her suffering," she said. "But that would mean there's no hope, no hope she'll ever be anything but--"

Women were gifted more often than men. She probably was clairvoyant, and nobody from the Men of Letters would even look at her twice.

"Do you often dream like that before something happens in your family?" Castiel asked. It was exactly what I'd been thinking.

"It runs in the family," she said. "My mother dreamed the night my father died in Ypres. He stood at the foot of her bed, she said, in his uniform."

Mathilda turned her head toward Castiel, her eyes still unfocused.

"She reacted to your voice," I said. "Say something else."

"What should I say?"

Mathilda opened her mouth, lips moving as if she groped for words.

I grabbed at his coat. "Look! It's definitely you. Say something else."

"Say a prayer for her," Mrs. van Horne said.

Castiel pressed his lips together. "By the intercession of St. Michael and the celestial Choir of Seraphim--"

Mathilda trembled and took in a deep breath, but her eyes remained empty even as she let out an ear-splitting scream.

3.

Mathilda screamed while a pack of white-clad orderlies hustled us out. She screamed as they strapped her down to the bed. She screamed as the heavy door swung shut on the nurse with them, her needle poised in the air with a drop of medicine glistening at the tip. Mathilda shrieked once, and then she didn't scream any more.

Mrs. van Horne wept into a handkerchief. Shed let me steer her to the first place I could find an empty chair, down the hall and into a common area bursting with mental patients. A man in a cardigan over printed pajamas played _Moonlight Sonata_ slightly off time. He struck a wrong note, cried "no!" and started again, from the top. The other patients were a collection of lost souls who swayed, read, shook their heads or sat enfolded in their own mystery, but for one.

Oh, God. Henry.

I took clammy hands off Mrs. van Horne's shoulder and tried to swallow, but my mouth was a desert.

Henry hadn't been around the Wink in the last couple of months. Now I knew why. He fingered the cuffs of striped yellow pajamas, his face sunken into despair. I conjured an image of Henry strapped into a device that would deliver electric shocks when he looked overlong at a picture of a man. Aversion therapy, they called it.

I never met anyone who said they were cured.

"No!"

 _Moonlight Sonata_ began again.

Henry waited until he caught my eye and smiled softly, shaking his head. He got on his feet and shuffled out of the common room, never looking back. The knot in my stomach loosened. He wouldn't squeal.

I wished I could do something for him.

Did I know anyone else here? I hoped not. Three tall north-facing windows provided soft light and the best seats in the house. A young woman stood unseeing by a window crowded with chickadees. Another girl, plain faced and indifferently groomed had an incomplete puzzle spread out in front of her to ignore. More birds clamored at her window. At the third, two girls faced each other in a game of chess, complete with a speed timer, and pieces flashed as they moved pawns and slapped the clock. The sill by their side didn't even have a stray feather.

"Jimmy," I said. "What do you suppose happened back there?"

"I don't know."

The girl turned her head. The woman shuffled around, face pointed at Castiel. Their empty eyes drove icy tacks into my back. The birds chirped and bumbled, pressing closer to the glass.

A doctor clad in white and absolute power made straight for Mrs. van Horne, armed with a clipboard and a gold Cross pen.

"I hope you’re all right, Mrs. van Horne," he said. "She must have given you quite a shock."

"Please tell me she's all right," Mrs. van Horne clasped his hand with both of hers.

"She's sedated. She's sleeping. But as frightening as it was, it's a promising sign." He removed a triplicate form from his clipboard and held it out. "This is a consent form. I want you to take it to your husband so he can sign it."

"What's it for?" I asked.

His mouth turned sour as he took in my rumpled attire. "And you are?"

"Just curious. Never mind."

Mrs. van Horne peered down at the form. "Electroconvulsive therapy? You want to give Mathilda electric shocks?"

"It's a new treatment," he said. "Wondrously effective. I think today proves Mathilda could be brought back from her catatonia with electrical stimulation to her brain. Don't worry yourself over it. Your husband and I will discuss it. Why don't you go home now and give him that paper."

She drew her hands close to her body. "I don't know."

"Now now, Mrs. van Horne. That's up to your husband. Don't you want your daughter back?"

She hesitated, then took the paper from his hand.

"Good girl," the doctor said. "Why don't you take it to him now."

He looked at me, finally. "Can you take her to her car? Mathilda's asleep. She won't wake up until tomorrow. There's no sense in her staying here."

"Mrs. van Horne?" I asked. "Would you like an escort?"

She opened her handbag and placed the consent form inside it. She retrieved pale gray gloves that matched her shoes, pulling each finger on as if she were in a trance.

"Dean," Castiel said.

The woman at the window had shuffled closer while I wasn't looking, and had caught a handful of the camel coat Castiel wore. She groped at Castiel's shoulder, her mouth moving with incoherent purpose.

"This is what Mathilda did just before she started screaming," Mrs. van Horne said. "Roberta, Roberta dear. Can you hear me?"

The doctor gestured at an orderly, who ambled over and walked Roberta away before she could start screeching. Castiel bore it all stoically but his shoulders relaxed when we headed out of the common room.

I tucked Mrs. van Horne's hand into the crook of my elbow. "You knew her name."

"I've talked with her mother. Horrible. She found Roberta in her bed, covered in dirt and...blood, and she was just as you see. Like her mind is gone."

"How long has she been here?"

"Oh, since November," Mrs. van Horne said.

"Can you excuse me a moment? What's Roberta's last name?"

"Howard."

I wondered if her middle initial was E. I stopped at the nursing station, and the redhead cocked a little smile at me. "Yes?"

"Roberta Howard. She's a catatonic patient. When was she admitted?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I have a hunch about something. Was it on about November 7th?"

A tiny wrinkle between her brows deepened and her lips pursed together. I had her by the curiosity. She pushed her wheeled chair back and checked Roberta's file.

"November 8th. What's your hunch?"

"I think she was a witness to a murder." It was a good lie because it was true. "Just like Mathilda van Horne."

Mrs. van Horne gasped behind me. Damn. I'd forgotten. "The Half-Moon killer?"

"I'd expect the authorities will want to know," I said. "For now, I'd keep this under your cap."

This story would be all over the asylum before we cleared the parking lot. I didn't care. We took Mrs. van Horne to her Packard and watched her drive back home. Nice car.

Too bad about the daughter.

"What's our next lead?" Castiel asked. "Do we interview the Howards?"

I tapped out a cigarette and curled my hand around a match to light it. "No. Now you tell me the truth."

Castiel stood there with his mouth open, trying to collect himself. "What do you--"

"The birds, Castiel. Mathilda's mother's dreams. The way they turned to you like a lodestone. I thought a demon had possessed Mathilda van Horne, but I was wrong, wasn't I."

Castiel looked at the churned up snow at our feet and didn't answer.

"Say it."

"You're right."

"I'm right about what?"

"Those people were all hosts. Weak ones, but they had been possessed. You're right, Dean. The Half-Moon Killer is an angel. And that angel needs to be stopped."

4.

We had miles to get back to the city and as much privacy as we could get, rolling past post-and-wire fences and acres of snowy ground: some fields lay fallow for the winter and livestock wandered upon others. I guided my Chevy into the ruts on the road and took it easy going back.

"Tell me what's going on."

Castiel folded his hands in front of him, and mumbled at his knees, like I could hear that over the engine.

"Louder."

"I said I should have told you. Jimmy's reprimanding me for holding back."

"How much of this does Jimmy know?"

"Only a little. Only since last night. I knew as soon as Jimmy inspected those pictures what we were dealing with. The script you don't recognize? It's...the human adaptation of a written form of angelic language. It's called Enochian."

I tore my eyes off the road to stare at him. "That's what Enochian is?"

Castiel gripped the dashboard with both hands. "Please watch the road."

I got back into my lane and waved at the guy who shook his fist at me. "That's high order Men of Letters stuff. They didn't let apprentices inside the libraries where that magic was recorded."

"Enochian magic allows the initiate to communicate with and request aid from angels."

"Seems to me you speak English pretty good."

"We hear prayers, Dean. All of them. Most of it is demanding noise. Please let me roll a seven. Make her want to kiss me. Let me have the promotion at work. I want, I want, I want. One in a hundred thousand prayers are actually interesting enough to listen to."

"Okay, so we're greedy children, and Enochian is the direct hotline to help. Why's an angel using woman hosts to kill the damned?"

Castiel bowed his head, stiff and uncomfortable in his seat as we bounced along the snowy road. He dug his fingers into the door handle and the upholstery, teeth buried deep in Jimmy's lower lip.

"Oh come on," I said. "You're afraid of cars?"

"If you drive into something at this speed, our bodies will be hurt very badly. And you don't look at the road."

I huffed and pointed my face toward the windshield. "We're fine. Listen. Crowley hired me to find the Half-Moon Killer because the victims all made deals, and somebody is getting in there and scooping up the souls Crowley's claimed as hers."

"I think you're correct."

"So what's the angel doing with the souls?"

He shook his head, the whites showing around his eyes. I looked back at the road before he could bawl me out.

We went half a mile before he opened his mouth. "Have you ever heard of the Grigori?"

"Yeah. Angels, sent to watch over humans on earth. Not just a story in the apocrypha, is it."

"Correct. We were the watchers. The closest to the humans. Sometimes an angel would come very close indeed."

I stole another glance at him. "You mean..."

Castiel looked embarrassed. "It's not what you imagine. We thought so highly of our particular humans that we insinuated a piece of ourselves within their bodies. Their children were the Nephilim. They had magic and incredible potential to create, and they passed those gifts on to their children. Most of the lines are diluted now, but there are still strong descendants. Like Jimmy. Like you."

The car jolted, along with my stomach. Castiel lurched over to grab at the wheel, and I batted his hands away.

"Stop that."

"You'll maim us."

"I've got it. Keep your hair on. You're saying hosts are--"

"Magicians and psychics."

I kept my eyes on the road. "We're your umpty ump great grandchildren."

"Yes. Heaven was in an uproar over what we had done. Soon we were ordered to abandon Earth and return. Some went, and were presumably forgiven. Others...rebelled, and the way to Heaven closed."

"You rebelled?"

"I wasn't alone. Sixty-four thousand angels refused to leave."

Farms gave way to houses on smaller lots. We were entering the borderland, that belt of property that wasn't quite city and wasn't quite farm.

"So you're trapped down here."

"Yes."

"And you want to go back?"

Castiel let his head fall back, letting out a gusty sigh. "We're tired, Dean. We're tired and we're weak. Once I could destroy walled cities, devastate armies, translocate wherever I pleased. Now I can't even call your soul back to your body if you die. I'm a shell of what I once was."

I pulled into the gas station and paid the boy huddled by the pump two dollars to fill her up. He pocketed the change with a tip of his hat. Castiel huddled in the car, looking down at his folded hands.

"You're dodging my question," I guided the car back on the road and she sputtered a little and shook.

"What question? Oh."

"Is it that bad?"

His mouth spread out, flat and tense. "I don't want to be right."

"Tell me."

"Human souls are powerful, Dean. They're priceless. The power of your soul in my hands--I could do things I haven't been able to do in centuries. But the power would fade quickly."

I cocked my head. "Say...about a month?"

Castiel pursed his lips and nodded. "The magic the Half-Moon killer is attempting takes a lot of power. More than most angels left in the exile possess. But with a soul to consume--"

That made a sick hollow in my gut. "He's eating them."

"Yes."

"Is that why all the markings? The sigils and...no." I came to a stop sign. A group of rosy-cheeked children tumbled into the street, shepherded across by their mother. "That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't fit the purpose. It is a summoning circle."

"Yes."

"What's he summoning?"

"The most powerful of us," Castiel said. "If anyone can open the way to Heaven, it's the archangel Michael. The square on the wall and on the last victim's chest was his name."

5.

That pronouncement shut me up as we melded into traffic. I guided my car toward the Loop, fitting into the school of cars moving along the roads to go visiting, to attend Sunday dinners and join with family.

I blinked and rolled down the window. The cold air woke me a little. "If you're right, this angel will be hard to stop."

"We'll need help. Zaphkiel is especially concerned. When he hears what we've learned, I'm sure he'll put out the call to find the abomination responsible for this."

"I have an idea how we might find the next victim," I said. "I'll try and convince Crowley to hand over the names of people whose tickets are coming up. Why damned souls, though?"

"Because it wouldn't be stealing from Heaven. They would waste anyway."

I eyed him again. "That's...thrifty."

"Knowing the potential victims could help us. But there's something we're overlooking."

"What's that?"

"You're on that list, Dean. You're damned to Hell. And your contract is due soon."

"And I'm getting in the Half-Moon killer's hair," I agreed. "I'm a ripe target. If I didn't have an angel for a friend."

"All the more reason to follow up on your lead."

"Now wait a minute. I've been running full tilt since three in the morning with no rest and less food. I'm hungry and tired."

"We can't spare the time."

"I'm no good to you if I pass out from hunger."

I parked and cut the engine. Castiel grimaced, but he opened the car door and ambled over the snow-cleared sidewalk toward Joe's. I reached inside my breast pocket, found the plain gold band I always kept there, and put it on my finger.

"Hey," I said. "Jimmy's ring."

"Hm?"

"Put it on."

Castiel rolled his eyes, but he slipped the ring on his finger. He held the door for me, and steamy air redolent of fryer oil kissed me on both cheeks. _Moonlight Serenade_ played from the jukebox. Our usual booth was empty, and copies of the _Tribune_ lay next to the cash register. The long counter and its round stools stood in an empty line, and green vinyl booths lined the wall of windows next to the sidewalk.

"Where's my Dorothy?" I called, and the waitress at the end of the long diner bar smiled, waving us to our usual booth. We crossed the green and black linoleum tile floor and took off our coats and Jackets. My revolver hung under Jimmy's left arm and it gave me the oddest pang to see it. He hadn't taken it off.

Castiel seemed more comfortable with it.

She came over and filled white stoneware cups with coffee, leaving a little room in Jimmy's. "Special is pot roast and braised vegetables served on mashed potatoes with apple pie for dessert," she said.

"Get me a plate of that, honey. Jimmy?"

"Same," Castiel said. "Thank you."

Dorothy scoffed and pushed Castiel's shoulder. "What's eating you, handsome?"

Castiel opened his mouth, and silence came out.

"We didn't get to see the game," I said. "He's helping me on a case."

"Oh, so that's why the iron," Dorothy said. "Thought you were a pacifist, honey."

"Dean insisted. The work is dangerous." He delivered those lines with a face of stone, and Dorothy bit her lip. She would needle him, ask him what was wrong.

I had to step in. "Have you heard anything? About the game?"

"Radio's going in the kitchen," Dorothy said. "I'll get you an update."

I smiled at her over my cup. "Thanks, doll."

Castiel picked up the coffee cup and took a sip. His eyes widened, and he set the cup down hastily, mouth twisted in distaste.

"Jimmy likes it with sugar and cream."

"That's...ugh." He closed his eyes, and Jimmy took a deep breath when he opened them.

"Hi."

Warmth bloomed in my chest. I barely stopped myself from reaching across the table for his hand. "Hi."

He reached for the cream and sugar, doctoring his cup the way he liked it. He tried to press his left arm into his side and darted a glare at the revolver hanging there. Oh, my Jimmy. He touched the instep of my shoe with the toe of his, and I couldn't smile at him like this. Somebody would see.

"I need a nickel."

"I've got one."

"So do I, hang on." He fished into his pocket and found one, plugging the jukebox console. Jimmy would choose Billie Holiday and Tommy Dorsey, every song the words he couldn't say while we hung around here and talked about sports and work and our cover-story lives.

I took in a deep breath as Dorothy set the plates down.

"That was fast."

"It was all ready to go. You two always get the Sunday special."

"What's the score?"

"The game's one-all," Dorothy reported, but then a cry of "Scores!" rose from the kitchen.

"I guess that's two-one, Blackhawks."

"Great news, sweetheart." Jimmy tapped his coffee cup for more. "Could be three wins in a row."

"Don't jinx it," I said.

Dorothy filled my cup and bustled off. Jimmy touched the toe of my shoe as Frank Sinatra sang _Say It (over and over again,)_ and I snuck another smile at him. The coffee was scorched, but the pot roast was fall-apart tender and the potatoes mashed with plenty of butter and sharp, fresh garlic.

Jimmy put his elbows on the table and went to work. We didn't talk much, concentrating on refueling bodies deprived of food and rest. I could sleep for a hundred years. I'd be lucky if I got three hours.

Jimmy eyed the last bit of pie crust on my plate, his eyebrows curved in worry. "Are you all right?"

"I should be asking you that."

Jimmy shrugged. "I'm fine. Tired."

"You should sleep."

He glanced around before leaning closer. "We should sleep."

Dorothy was in the kitchen. No one was looking at us. "I agree."

We left Dorothy the bill and two bits for her tip. The car was fine where it was, so we passed it and took State Street up to the Reliance Building.

"I should have told you," Jimmy said over the hum of the elevator.

"It was a secret, wasn't it?"

"Are we supposed to have secrets?"

"Why not? I have one."

He reached up to cup my cheek, his thumb sliding across my skin. "You never have to tell me, Dean. It won't change anything."

It wouldn't, if I could figure out how to trap an angel and get my soul back. If I hadn't been holding that against my vest, I probably would have gotten stupid over Jimmy's secret.

"You're right, baby. It doesn't change anything."

"You mean it?" Jimmy looked hopeful.

"You are exactly who you are before I knew about Castiel, got it? Even if he knows about--"

I bit my tongue. Jimmy smiled and stole a kiss before the doors opened.

6.

I didn't know where Jimmy had been shot, but I felt his unmarked chest in the dark. "Did it hurt?"

"In the abstract," Jimmy said. "Dean. Castiel...we've been part of each other for a long time."

"How did you two..."

"I prayed, and he came. He came back, he talked to me, he told me what he was...and when I turned eighteen, I offered to be his host. He doesn't take control often. This is the longest time. He's not really supposed to do it."

"Why not?"

"It's how they show humility and regret for their arrogance," Jimmy explained. "They say that if you bond with your host, live a human life, and die with him, you'll ascend."

"Is that true?"

Jimmy slid his hand over my shoulder and pressed closer, tangling our legs together. "No one knows. You have to take it on faith."

"And the Half-Moon killer doesn't have any." Streetlight bounced off low, snow-laden clouds outside. The light spilling into the room glowed on Jimmy's skin like gold. "So once this is over, I get you back."

"I'm all yours."

"I'll never get tired of hearing you say that."

We slept curled together, Jimmy's head on my shoulder and frost skating up the corner windows. I maybe got fifteen minutes before I woke up with my gun in my hand. I crept halfway across my parlor in a crouch, keeping line of sight to the front door of my office, frosted and lettered with _Winchester Investigations--Please Walk In._

Someone had.

A shadow sat in my chair, dark and tall with a wide brimmed hat pulled low. The shadow leaned on his elbow, fingers tapping on the arm of his chair.

I leveled the persuader at him and hit the switch, squinting at my brother Sammy.


	5. Act V

1.

He was in the same priest outfit from this morning, only a wool coat pulled over it. He'd left the dog collar on, so the hat was a little incongruous. It was a natty buff-colored fedora, worn at a rakish angle.

He'd gotten in here without tripping any of the alarms that should have gone off if a magician walked through the front door, rode the elevator, or crossed the Italian marble floor before my door. But Sammy was a curse-breaker, and nothing I put down would have stopped him for long. Still, I gave him a look, and his shoulders touched his ears.

"Sorry. I had to talk to you.”

“The telephone works.”

“You took your sweet time getting in here."

"I would have enough warning if you hadn't broken my wards. Rude, brother."

"So was the little curse you built in to tag Men of Letters," he retorted. "Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?"

"You're going to ask me to stay out of it again."

Sam laced his fingers together and laid them across his stomach. "I can't let you screw this up, Dean. If it were anything else, I'd help you. But not this."

"So I sit on the sidelines while an angel murders people? Oh sure. I'll read some Kipling and wait to die."

He didn't even blink. He'd known. All along he'd known an angel was killing those people.

He glanced away. I kept on staring.

My brother tapped his fingers. "I don't know why I thought you'd accepted what you'd done."

"I had. Right until I got a chance to reverse it," I said. "My soul, Sammy."

"You shouldn't have dealt it in the first place, Dean."

"You were dead."

"Dad was there. Waiting for me."

"I couldn't let you go like that," I said. "I would have done anything to get you back, and I did. Now look at you. Man of Letters, big and strong--"

There were cigarettes in my coat. I opened the pack and glanced back at Sammy.

"Pass me those matches?"

Sam stared at the bright little box on the desk and it floated through the air, landing neatly in my hand.

I smiled at him and lit one. "Still got it, Sam."

"I imagine you still see visions when you touch things."

I shrugged. "Comes in handy on missing persons cases. Why are the Men of Letters pissing all over this? You never poke your nose out of your chapterhouses, but suddenly you're all over the board. What's the deal?"

"How much do you know?"

"You saw my partner on this one," I said. "I'm in the loop."

He tucked his chin back and thought hard. "What do you know about Enochian magic?"

I blew out a smoke in time with the hum of the elevator. "I can use it in a complete sentence. The Men of Letters practice Enochian magic to get aid and assistance from the angels who are exiled to earth. How's that?"

Sammy's mouth took on a thoughtful slant. "He told you a lot."

I dragged on the cigarette. "Here's my hunch. You want Heaven open. All your feathered friends lost the juice they had in the good old days. They get back home, and their gratitude pays back in more power for you. But do you know what you're shielding? Can you live with what the Half-Moon killer is doing?"

Sam blinked. Uncertainty rippled across his face, but he shook his head. "They're damned. They made their choice."

"What about the husked out hosts left to rot up in Dunning?"

He blinked again. "What?"

I would have smirked but the hair stood up on the back of my neck. The elevator.

It was running.

We had our guns on the door as it swung open, but Shorty had one too, an ugly little automatic. He trained it on me.

Great. "I lose my wards for five minutes and look what walks in."

Sam put his gun down. "Delaney. You don't need that."

"He needs a hole put in him."

Sammy got out of my chair and rounded my desk, putting himself between me and Shorty's bean shooter. "You don't need to do this."

"We don't need him," he sneered. "We don't have to make do with his tainted vessel, Sam."

My throat went dry as Jimmy stepped into the room, unarmed and in his undershirt.

Shorty grabbed Sam's wrist. "Not when we can use yours."

"Dean!" Jimmy shouted. "That's an angel!"

Shorty and Sam vanished.

 

2.

I couldn't go after Sam in my underwear, but I skipped as many steps in dressing as I could. "Where'd they go?"

"I don't know," Castiel said. "Didn't you have wards?"

"Sam got cute and broke them all when he busted in here."

Castiel let out a string of harsh syllables. I didn't need to know the tongue to imagine the air turning blue. "We need help. Zaphkiel and Sariel can call everybody in. And I can--"

He closed his eyes, and nodded. "The birds are awake. If there's an angel nearby, they will go to him."

I made sure my silk handkerchief was in my pocket, checked my revolver, and slapped my hat on my head. "Hit the road, Castiel."

We shattered into six billion pieces, and came together in the nave of St. Stanislaus. The saints staring down at us didn't startle me, but I looked hard at the one who held the most prominent place among them--Michael the archangel, sword in his hand.

We hurried into the sacristy and beyond. "Zaphkiel is downstairs."

"You can feel him?"

"Yes." We ran down corridors. I leapt the last six stairs to save a little time, and we skidded to a stop in front of an iron-banded door. Frankincense reeked from the crack under the door, but this was no time to get missish. Castiel burst through the door and I was on his heels.

"Zaphkiel, something terrible has--"

We froze.

The room was a generous one, about twenty feet square and ten feet to the ceiling, and every inch of it painted in symbols. I couldn't decipher it all if I had a month, but we didn't even have a minute. They spread over the floor and up the walls, the work of days to prepare by a single hand, ringing the room in protection and purpose.

Kneeling and shackled to the floor, mother-naked and fighting to get free, was Sammy. Zaphkiel stood over him, pouring clear liquid on his head and chanting in Latin. I knew what he said: _Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow._

Castiel reached inside his coat and drew a dagger, all silver and etched along the blade in Enochian. He held the blade out and it lengthened, becoming a sword.

"Zaphkiel," he said. "Stop this. Repent of it."

"It's time for us to go home, brother."

Water dripped off Sammy's hair and into his face. He hauled on the chains. Locked. He was trapped. I had to do something.

I plucked at my coat sleeve, drew out a lockpick, and threw. It landed short and to the left of Sammy's knee.

Shit.

Castiel hefted the sword. "If you do this, Sam will die."

Zaphkiel anointed my brother with oil, the air taking on the scent of olives. "He longs for Heaven. His soul will be delivered."

"Step aside."

"Don't make me hurt you, Castiel."

Castiel charged. Zaphkiel made a sign with his fingers, twisting them in another, and pushed the air.

Castiel went down in a heap.

"I despise interruptions," Zaphkiel said.

I leveled my iron at Zaphkiel. "Step away from my brother and let's chat."

He tutted his tongue. "Dean, you know the Chaldean hours as well as I do. I can't stop now."

I didn't have time for smart-mouthed banter. I fired and a hole bored into Zaphkiel's surplice and cassock, a scarlet flower blooming just over his heart.

He staggered and windmilled his arms to keep on his feet. He found his balance and glared at me. "Monkey. That _hurt._ "

I shot him again for the sake of a snappy comeback. It rocked him back a step, but he put on an ugly face and stepped around Castiel as he marched toward me. I sighted down my revolver and took him in the other lung.

He moved slower, but he kept coming. Something in these bullets was hurting him. Maybe I'd live to figure out what it was. He staggered, and blood sprayed from his mouth as he coughed.

I adjusted my aim and drilled one right in the middle of his forehead. Fall, you bastard. Fall down and stay down.

But he kept coming even after the other two tore up his face. I took a swing at him but he gave me a tap to the belly that had me wheezing for breath. He took the revolver out of my hand, held it by the barrel, and whipped it across my face.

I was coughing my own blood now. I landed on my knees. I fumbled the handkerchief out of my pocket and coughed on it, bright drops sinking into the printed silk.

"Uncle."

Zaphkiel smirked. Bullets oozed out of his wounds. The wounds themselves closed, and he was whole.

"I had plans for you, Dean. You'd do, even tainted. But Sam? He's pure. Unsullied. And every bit as powerful a host as you. More fitting for my eldest brother."

Sammy had quit thrashing around.

Castiel stirred. I coughed into the handkerchief. "Let my brother go. Use me."

"Oh, I will."

He hit me with my own gun again. "I don't need the power of your soul, but there's always room for one more."

I covered my mouth with the handkerchief. One of my teeth wobbled in its moorings. I muttered into its silken folds and coughed a third time.

Zaphkiel cocked his head, dark button eyes shining. "What was that?"

"Sorry." I grinned at him with bloody teeth. "I said _o diabole, venī auxiliō meum!_ ”

Zaphkiel snatched the handkerchief from my hand and spread it open, horrified at the summoning circle painted on silk and charged with my own blood.

A stink like burnt matches and rotten eggs fought with the opoponax and jasmine scent of Shalimar perfume. Crowley wore a gray fedora over her platinum curls and a pinstripe double breasted suit, her lips red and shiny as blood.

"Hello, Dean. Found my soul-thief, have you?"

"Sure did. My soul?"

"Done."

Crowley snapped her fingers and the sound settled in my chest.

I could breathe a little deeper. "Thanks, doll."

"It was my pleasure. You might not want to watch this," Crowley said, a little smirk playing on her lips. "I don't believe in quick deaths--"

"Crowley! Look out!"

Shorty came out of the shadows and jumped her.

3.

I got on my feet. The time for shamming was over. Zaphkiel stared at me with pure hate in his eyes. "You little weasel."

Another of those long, silvery daggers appeared in his hand. I wondered if they were made from the iron of a dead star.

"Dean!"

Jimmy's voice. Something came flying toward me. I caught his gun, with six more of those bullets inside.

I put enchanted iron in the angel as fast as I could cock the hammer and squeeze. He kept coming, blade raised. I backed up and tried to make Swiss cheese of his head, but he kept coming.

I fired my last bullet. My back hit the wall. Zaphkiel raised his blade, the wounds in his skull already healing.

I wondered if I would go to Heaven just before I fell down.

Something knocked into my hip and I went down. Pain jolted from the heel of my hand up my arm. I'd stuck my hands out to catch myself, and my elbow throbbed, my wrist pulsed hot. I looked back. Jimmy stood in my place.

"No!"

The blade came down and sank into Jimmy. Wide-eyed, he clutched at the handle. Zaphkiel pulled it out, and blood fountained from the wound.

Oh no, no.

He groped for the handle, and blood trickled out of his mouth. I got on my knees, reaching for him. Jimmy saw me, his summer sky eyes focused on my face.

"It hurts."

The light in his eyes went out.

Jimmy went limp and fell to the ground.

Zaphkiel turned back toward me, his knife covered in Jimmy's blood.

My life wasn't worth anything, but I fought for it just the same. I caught his wrist and dug my fingers in a sensitive point; he kept his grip on the knife and tore his hand away. He came at me again, the blade low this time, and I'd played my hand. It was done.

Zaphkiel gasped. Light poured from his eyes, his nose, his open, screaming mouth. Lighting burst under the surface of his skin as the light bled out of him, flared twice, and died.

Sam stood behind him, Castiel's bloody blade in hand and breathing hard.

Oh no, no Sammy. Not this. I fought the burr in my throat, fought the tears burning my eyes and nose.

Sammy came closer. "Are you all right?"

Nothing would ever be right again.

Jimmy's blue, blue eyes stared at nothing, and I was nothing, nothing without him.

Another body thumped to the floor. Crowley dabbed away a drop of blood that had landed on her cheek. She gave the body an angry glare and stepped over it, blood spattered all over her pinstripe suit.

"Messy. All right, love?"

I gathered Jimmy in my arms. He was heavy, his limbs loose and awkward. I wasn't all right.

But I could be. "Crowley. Crowley, he's dead."

She gave me the saddest look. "I know, darling. Why don't you--" She crouched next to me, and reached out to close his eyes.

No. I squeezed Jimmy tight. "Bring him back."

Sammy's mouth fell open. "What?"

Crowley tilted her pretty head. "Are you sure?"

"Bring him back."

Crowley sighed, and gave me a wistful smile. "Ah, love. My usual terms."

"Yes. Do it."

Crowley knelt in the blood, caught my chin, and gave me a kiss.

Jimmy gasped in a deep breath and opened his eyes.

4.

I held him in my arms. I kissed him. I washed the blood off his face with my tears.

"Dean." he touched my face and looked into my eyes. "I was dead."

"I know, baby."

He looked at Crowley, and back at me. "How--"

"I would do anything for you. And I did."

Sam took a step back, the blade clattering to the ground. "You--"

I faced his horror, the cords standing out on his neck as he tried not to gag. "Gonna call me a faggot, Sammy? Sexual psychopath? A degenerate?"

"No. You're my brother." He swiped at his cheeks. "You're damned again."

"What about you? You whacked an angel. I hear they get sore about that upstairs. I'm sorry, little brother."

"But you--" He closed his eyes. "Is he worth it?"

“You saved my life. Was it worth it?"

Sammy's shoulders dropped. "I didn't really understand until it was your life on the line, and I could do something about it."

"They'll kick you out of the Brotherhood, Sammy."

"Yeah." He looked around, then gave me a little smile. "You need a partner in the private eye business?"

I couldn't help it. I smiled wide enough to break my face. "I think we're relocating."

Crowley cleared her throat. She looked Sammy up and down with a slow roaming eye. "Charming as you are in your birthday suit, Mister, I think we'd better move it along."

Sam came closer and Crowley put her arms around the three of us. I smelled sulfur just before we joined with the void.

We materialized in Crowley's suite.

"Plenty of room for all of you," she said. "Julian, will you fetch Mr. Winchester a robe, please."

Julian didn't turn a hair at a naked man or the blood we smeared into the white carpet.

Jimmy curled into my chest and held me tight. "You sold your soul."

"I'd do it again in a minute."

"We’ll bury you in ten years."

"I'm sorry, baby."

"You--"

My head rocked with the force of his slap. My ears rang. Heat bloomed on my cheek. Jimmy grabbed me by the lapels. "Ten years. That's all we have?"

"Don't you want it?"

He had tears in his eyes, but he laughed. "Every second. You idiot."

"Everything you want, baby. Anything you want. Name it and it's yours."

"You'll regret promising me that," Jimmy said.

I clutched him to me. "I never will."

5.

We lay together on a round bed draped in silk satin in the dark, and I had Jimmy's earlobe between my teeth. The moon peeped in our windows, but she was pretty good at keeping secrets.

"Wake up, baby."

"Hrm. Tired."

"I know. Did Castiel..."

"He's fine. Did you want to ask him something?"

"Did he make it to Heaven?"

"He did. But we still...we're still connected."

I rolled onto my side and propped up on an elbow. "What?"

"Heaven's locked. But we can still talk to each other. He wants to tell you--"

"Is he sore at me?"

"He says what you did was selfish."

"Well," I licked dry lips and looked away. "I guess that says it all."

"But I'm selfish too," Jimmy said. "I didn't want you to die on your birthday."

"You knew."

He smiled. "You've been thinking about it a lot lately."

"I should have known I couldn't keep a secret from you, baby. Are you sore at me for yanking you out of Heaven?"

"Heaven can wait if I can get ten more years with you."

"We'll go to San Francisco." I pulled him tight into my arms.. "We'll get a house in North Beach. I've got the down payment. We'll be happy, baby."

We would be. I'd mow the lawn, burn the sausage, wake up next to him every morning. I'd be grateful, even though I knew the end.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost. I put this story up in January, hit the worst depressive period I've had in years, and took it down. I had weird expectations, and when they weren't met I decided that I was an utter failure and I had fooled myself into believing that this was the best story I had ever written and I was actually really bad at this writing thing.
> 
> I understand now that this really isn't a story that I can call a success because a lot of people like it. The fact is, not many people will. It's in first person. Dean isn't with Cas. There are no sex scenes. It's a weird little historical AU in the noir detective tradition and it's very niche. 
> 
> If you liked it, I'm glad. If you have a comment, I'd like to hear it, either here or in my tumblr askbox, [which you can find here.](http://ceeainthereforthat.tumblr.com/ask)


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